Tempo Planner 3.0 features improved Program Planning, with streamlined version and iteration planning and a new program capacity report so you can get the big picture on your higher-level planning initiatives. It also features new Team Timelines, with improved technology and performance to enable team leads to plan for their teams more effectively.

Tempo Planner is developed by a development team and intended to solve the needs of product teams like our own. We know the challenges we want to solve because we encounter them every day and constantly striving to find better ways to help agile product development teams collaborate better, release faster, and deliver within scope. Tempo Planner is developed towards becoming the ultimate agile release and capacity planning tool to meet our own needs.

The aim with Tempo Planner 3.0 release was to better utilize and combine the functionality of team and program planning, to simplify the user interface, speed up access to features, introduce new planning abilities, and to improve overall performance for users. So that you can better mitigate risks, deliver new releases on time, and manage your program backlogs and roadmaps with ease.

Explore the New Features of Tempo Planner 3.0

With the latest release, Tempo Planner can now be broadly divided by team level and program level. You can manage and plan for your team in a granular way on the team level and explore the road ahead and make adjustments across all the teams sharing a program on a program level – giving you flexible views to meet the needs of your role.

With Tempo Planner 3.0 we have simplified our planning timelines into two main timelines – the program timeline and a team timeline. Each of those timeline contain two tabs that let you toggle rapidly between viewing the road ahead by projects or team members. We feel this is a more intuitive interface and it provides smoother performance for our users.

As before, the Timeline views reflect the role and permission setting of a user.
With team members able to view the above timelines with the default Browse Team permission, whereas Team Leads and Project Managers with the Plan Permission are able to plan for their team and team members on the timeline. JIRA Admins will have the above permissions and an additional administrator access and manage team permission that enables them to create teams, manage teams, create projects, and configure settings for teams.

Team Level Timelines for Precise Granular Planning

The Teams Projects Timeline is your first stop for detailed team planning. This tab displays the projects that the team is connected to and the versions for each project show on individual lanes on the timeline. Those projects can then be expanded to display underlying epics. This timeline’s primary function is to provide both the team and its managers a proper roadmap of all upcoming versions for a team. It benefits better collaboration and planning, and gives a greatly improved overview of the project release schedule.

The Teams Members Timeline enables the user to plan for the team on a timeline. The Teams Members Timeline is essentially the same as the old Team Timeline except for a boost in performance. As before the Teams Members Timeline lets you view all upcoming plan items for the members of a single team, taking into account their holiday plans and any differences in work schedules. The main new feature in the Team Members Timeline view is the new and improved Plan Item Sidebar.

The Plan Item Sidebar on the right-hand side has undergone a significant redesign to expand your view of available plan items. From there you can drag plan items, whether it be Versions, Epics, or Issues, to the timeline and plan for individual team members or the team as a whole. The categories in the new and versatile sidebar can now be expanded to reveal underlying items. epics and the Epic plan items can be expanded to reveal underlying issues. Versions expand to reveal underlying Epics, Epics show underlying Issues, and the Issues, well, they’re as granular is it goes. Everything can be dragged and dropped for planning on your team’s timeline and clicking a plan item will take you directly to the relevant issue view in JIRA.
All your granular team planning in one place and as a team lead this is all you need to designate team effort for the road ahead and monitor your team’s availability and momentum.

Program Level Timelines for the Big Picture View

A program has been described as a team of teams – higher-level overview of how a program is progressing and the capacity of the teams within the program. The new Program Timeline gives managers and team leads the ability to view and plan across teams within a given program. The new Program Timeline is divided in two: the Program Teams Timeline and the Program Projects Timeline.

The Program Teams Timeline shows all iterations (sprints) which have been scheduled for each team within that program and enables users to schedule new iterations and edit existing ones on the timeline. Teams are lined up on the left-hand side and the iterations show as blue boxes on the timeline in the lane for each team. These timeboxes give you a clear view of team activity, showing the start and end dates and the allocated time for each iteration. This gives you a clear visual overview of what all the agile teams in the program have been committed to at a glance.

The Program Projects Timeline is a revitalized and improved version of the old Program Roadmap. This timeline can be seen as a higher-level version of the Teams Project Timeline and the two are synched up.
The Program Projects Timeline shows a list of the projects within a program. The left-hand side shows a list of the projects and on the timeline row for each project, there you can view the versions already planned for the project along with start and end dates for the versions. Managers and team leads, can create and edit versions directly on the timeline with ease. The main goal of the Program Projects Timeline is to provide both the team and its managers a proper roadmap for all upcoming versions.
Each project row contains an expandable sub-row which display the epics within that project. An epic with a due date will show on the Program Project Timeline as a green, expandable box.

The Program Board to Monitor the Progress of Teams

In addition to the new program timeline, the program level contains a Program Board with kanban-like columns and a backlog sidebar where items can be prioritized. This is in fact what used to be called Program Kanban and Program Backlog merged into a single, smooth view. The program board lets you track progress across multiple teams and improve the overall performance of your teams.
The kanban-like board for each team is divided into the categories of To Do, In Progress, and Done. You can drag-and-drop items between those three categories for each team, drag unassigned items from the backlog to the board of any team, or drag items between the boards of different teams. This is gives you an invaluable look at how your teams are progressing and let’s you refocus efforts in a big picture way. With the new Program Board, managers and team leads can rest assured that they are up-to-date on team performance and see how epics are progressing.

Program Capacity Report

Finally, we have added a new Program Capacity Report for high-level management. The Program Capacity Report builds on the Team Capacity Report and managers and executives can use this tool to determine, at a glance, the capacity of time planned across their teams, see the estimated available man hours, and gauge the effective team size.

The Program Capacity Report provides a higher-level view of capacity, with which project managers can determine team capacity across several teams within the same program and see the long-term impact of changes to team allocation. The Program Capacity report helps you utilize your teams better and empowers you to mitigate risks and respond to changes on the fly.

Tempo Planner 3.0 provides you with all your team planning needs in one place and all your teams in one space.

Set your goals and see them realized!

And More

These are just the main new features of Tempo Planner 3.0 release. Others include:

What’s new screen is displayed the first time users log into the Tempo Planner version

The Timeline is only hover-able if the user has the Plan Time permission

All sidebars in team planning have empty states which direct the user to actions related to fixing the empty state